[Contributed by James Rusk (<jrusk@cyberramp.net>).
Translated by Constance Garnett, "The Schoolmistress
and Other Stories," 1921. Other translators have
entitled it, "In the Cart", closer to the
original Russian title.]

The Schoolmistress

The highroad was dry, a lovely April sun was
shining warmly, but the snow was still lying in
the ditches and in the woods. Winter, dark, long,
and spiteful, was hardly over; spring had come all
of a sudden. But neither the warmth nor the
languid transparent woods, warmed by the breath of
spring, nor the black flocks of birds flying over
the huge puddles that were like lakes, nor the
marvelous fathomless sky, into which it seemed one
would have gone away so joyfully, presented
anything new or interesting to Marya Vassilyevna
who was sitting in the cart. For thirteen years
she had been schoolmistress, and there was no
reckoning how many times during all those years
she had been to the town for her salary; and
whether it were spring as now, or a rainy autumn
evening, or winter, it was all the same to her,
and she always--invariably--longed for one thing
only, to get to the end of her journey as quickly
as could be.

She felt as though she had been living in that
part of the country for ages and ages, for a
hundred years, and it seemed to her that she knew
every stone, every tree on the road from the town
to her school. Her past was here, her present was
here, and she could imagine no other future than
the school, the road to the town and back again,
and again the school and again the road. . . .

She had got out of the habit of thinking of
her past before she became a schoolmistress, and
had almost forgotten it. She had once had a
father and mother; they had lived in Moscow in a
big flat near the Red Gate, but of all that life
there was left in her memory only something vague
and fluid like a dream. Her father had died when
she was ten years old, and her mother had died
soon after. . . . She had a brother, an
officer; at first they used to write to each
other, then her brother had given up answering her
letters, he had got out of the way of writing. Of
her old belongings, all that was left was a
photograph of her mother, but it had grown dim
from the dampness of the school, and now nothing
could be seen but the hair and the eyebrows.

When they had driven a couple of miles, old
Semyon, who was driving, turned round and said:

"They have caught a government clerk in
the town. They have taken him away. The story is
that with some Germans he killed Alexeyev, the
Mayor, in Moscow."

"Who told you that?"

"They were reading it in the paper, in
Ivan Ionov's tavern."

And again they were silent for a long time.
Marya Vassilyevna thought of her school, of the
examination that was coming soon, and of the girl
and four boys she was sending up for it. And just
as she was thinking about the examination, she was
overtaken by a neighboring landowner called Hanov
in a carriage with four horses, the very man who
had been examiner in her school the year before.
When he came up to her he recognized her and
bowed.

"Good-morning," he said to her.
"You are driving home, I suppose."

This Hanov, a man of forty with a listless
expression and a face that showed signs of wear,
was beginning to look old, but was still handsome
and admired by women. He lived in his big
homestead alone, and was not in the service; and
people used to say of him that he did nothing at
home but walk up and down the room whistling, or
play chess with his old footman. People said,
too, that he drank heavily. And indeed at the
examination the year before the very papers he
brought with him smelt of wine and scent. He had
been dressed all in new clothes on that occasion,
and Marya Vassilyevna thought him very attractive,
and all the while she sat beside him she had felt
embarrassed. She was accustomed to see frigid and
sensible examiners at the school, while this one
did not remember a single prayer, or know what to
ask questions about, and was exceedingly courteous
and delicate, giving nothing but the highest
marks.

"I am going to visit Bakvist," he
went on, addressing Marya Vassilyevna, "but I
am told he is not at home."

They turned off the highroad into a by-road to
the village, Hanov leading the way and Semyon
following. The four horses moved at a walking
pace, with effort dragging the heavy carriage
through the mud. Semyon tacked from side to side,
keeping to the edge of the road, at one time
through a snowdrift, at another through a pool,
often jumping out of the cart and helping the
horse. Marya Vassilyevna was still thinking about
the school, wondering whether the arithmetic
questions at the examination would be difficult or
easy. And she felt annoyed with the Zemstvo board
at which she had found no one the day before. How
unbusiness-like! Here she had been asking them
for the last two years to dismiss the watchman,
who did nothing, was rude to her, and hit the
schoolboys; but no one paid any attention. It was
hard to find the president at the office, and when
one did find him he would say with tears in his
eyes that he hadn't a moment to spare; the
inspector visited the school at most once in three
years, and knew nothing whatever about his work,
as he had been in the Excise Duties Department,
and had received the post of school inspector
through influence. The School Council met very
rarely, and there was no knowing where it met; the
school guardian was an almost illiterate peasant,
the head of a tanning business, unintelligent,
rude, and a great friend of the watchman's--and
goodness knows to whom she could appeal with
complaints or inquiries . . . .

"He really is handsome," she
thought, glancing at Hanov.

The road grew worse and worse. . . . They
drove into the wood. Here there was no room to
turn round, the wheels sank deeply in, water
splashed and gurgled through them, and sharp twigs
struck them in the face.

"What a road!" said Hanov, and he
laughed.

The schoolmistress looked at him and could not
understand why this queer man lived here. What
could his money, his interesting appearance, his
refined bearing do for him here, in this mud, in
this God-forsaken, dreary place? He got no
special advantages out of life, and here, like
Semyon, was driving at a jog-trot on an appalling
road and enduring the same discomforts. Why live
here if one could live in Petersburg or abroad?
And one would have thought it would be nothing for
a rich man like him to make a good road instead of
this bad one, to avoid enduring this misery and
seeing the despair on the faces of his coachman
and Semyon; but he only laughed, and apparently
did not mind, and wanted no better life. He was
kind, soft, naïve, and he did not understand
this coarse life, just as at the examination he
did not know the prayers. He subscribed nothing
to the schools but globes, and genuinely regarded
himself as a useful person and a prominent worker
in the cause of popular education. And what use
were his globes here?

"Hold on, Vassilyevna!" said Semyon.

The cart lurched violently and was on the
point of upsetting; something heavy rolled on to
Marya Vassilyevna's feet--it was her parcel of
purchases. There was a steep ascent uphill
through the clay; here in the winding ditches
rivulets were gurgling. The water seemed to have
gnawed away the road; and how could one get along
here! The horses breathed hard. Hanov got out of
his carriage and walked at the side of the road in
his long overcoat. He was hot.

"What a road!" he said, and laughed
again. "It would soon smash up one's
carriage."

"Nobody obliges you to drive about in
such weather," said Semyon surlily.
"You should stay at home."

"I am dull at home, grandfather. I don't
like staying at home."

Beside old Semyon he looked graceful and
vigorous, but yet in his walk there was something
just perceptible which betrayed in him a being
already touched by decay, weak, and on the road to
ruin. And all at once there was a whiff of
spirits in the wood. Marya Vassilyevna was filled
with dread and pity for this man going to his ruin
for no visible cause or reason, and it came into
her mind that if she had been his wife or sister
she would have devoted her whole life to saving
him from ruin. His wife! Life was so ordered
that here he was living in his great house alone,
and she was living in a God-forsaken village
alone, and yet for some reason the mere thought
that he and she might be close to one another and
equals seemed impossible and absurd. In reality,
life was arranged and human relations were
complicated so utterly beyond all understanding
that when one thought about it one felt uncanny
and one's heart sank.

"And it is beyond all
understanding," she thought, "why God
gives beauty, this graciousness, and sad, sweet
eyes to weak, unlucky, useless people--why they
are so charming."

"Here we must turn off to the
right," said Hanov, getting into his
carriage. "Good-by! I wish you all things
good!"

And again she thought of her pupils, of the
examination, of the watchman, of the School
Council; and when the wind brought the sound of
the retreating carriage these thoughts were
mingled with others. She longed to think of
beautiful eyes, of love, of the happiness which
would never be. . . .

His wife? It was cold in the morning, there
was no one to heat the stove, the watchman
disappeared; the children came in as soon as it
was light, bringing in snow and mud and making a
noise: it was all so inconvenient, so comfortless.
Her abode consisted of one little room and the
kitchen close by. Her head ached every day after
her work, and after dinner she had heart-burn.
She had to collect money from the school-children
for wood and for the watchman, and to give it to
the school guardian, and then to entreat him--that
overfed, insolent peasant--for God's sake to send
her wood. And at night she dreamed of
examinations, peasants, snowdrifts. And this life
was making her grow old and coarse, making her
ugly, angular, and awkward, as though she were
made of lead. She was always afraid, and she
would get up from her seat and not venture to sit
down in the presence of a member of the Zemstvo or
the school guardian. And she used formal,
deferential expressions when she spoke of any one
of them. And no one thought her attractive, and
life was passing drearily, without affection,
without friendly sympathy, without interesting
acquaintances. How awful it would have been in
her position if she had fallen in love!

"Hold on, Vassilyevna!"

Again a sharp ascent uphill. . . .

She had become a schoolmistress from
necessity, without feeling any vocation for it;
and she had never thought of a vocation, of
serving the cause of enlightenment; and it always
seemed to her that what was most important in her
work was not the children, nor enlightenment, but
the examinations. And what time had she for
thinking of vocation, of serving the cause of
enlightenment? Teachers, badly paid doctors, and
their assistants, with their terribly hard work,
have not even the comfort of thinking that they
are serving an idea or the people, as their heads
are always stuffed with thoughts of their daily
bread, of wood for the fire, of bad roads, of
illnesses. It is a hard-working, an uninteresting
life, and only silent, patient cart-horses like
Mary Vassilyevna could put up with it for long;
the lively, nervous, impressionable people who
talked about vocation and serving the idea were
soon weary of it and gave up the work.

Semyon kept picking out the driest and
shortest way, first by a meadow, then by the backs
of the village huts; but in one place the peasants
would not let them pass, in another it was the
priest's land and they could not cross it, in
another Ivan Ionov had bought a plot from the
landowner and had dug a ditch round it. They kept
having to turn back.

They reached Nizhneye Gorodistche. Near the
tavern on the dung-strewn earth, where the snow
was still lying, there stood wagons that had
brought great bottles of crude sulphuric acid.
There were a great many people in the tavern, all
drivers, and there was a smell of vodka, tobacco,
and sheepskins. There was a loud noise of
conversation and the banging of the swing-door.
Through the wall, without ceasing for a moment,
came the sound of a concertina being played in the
shop. Marya Vassilyevna sat down and drank some
tea, while at the next table peasants were
drinking vodka and beer, perspiring from the tea
they had just swallowed and the stifling fumes of
the tavern.

A little pock-marked man with a black beard,
who was quite drunk, was suddenly surprised by
something and began using bad language.

"What are you swearing at, you
there?" Semyon, who was sitting some way off,
responded angrily. "Don't you see the young
lady?"

"The young lady!" someone mimicked
in another corner.

"Swinish crow!"

"We meant nothing . . ." said the
little man in confusion. "I beg your pardon.
We pay with our money and the young lady with
hers. Good-morning!"

"Good-morning," answered the
schoolmistress.

"And we thank you most feelingly."

Marya Vassilyevna drank her tea with
satisfaction, and she, too, began turning red like
the peasants, and fell to thinking again about
firewood, about the watchman. . . .

"Stay, old man," she heard from the
next table, "it's the schoolmistress from
Vyazovye. . . . We know her; she's a good
young lady."

"She's all right!"

The swing-door was continually banging, some
coming in, others going out. Marya Vassilyevna
sat on, thinking all the time of the same things,
while the concertina went on playing and playing.
The patches of sunshine had been on the floor,
then they passed to the counter, to the wall, and
disappeared altogether; so by the sun it was past
midday. The peasants at the next table were
getting ready to go. The little man, somewhat
unsteadily, went up to Marya Vassilyevna and held
out his hand to her; following his example, the
others shook hands, too, at parting, and went out
one after another, and the swing-door squeaked and
slammed nine times.

"Vassilyevna, get ready," Semyon
called to her.

They set off. And again they went at a
walking pace.

"A little while back they were building a
school here in their Nizhneye Gorodistche,"
said Semyon, turning round. "It was a wicked
thing that was done!"

"Why, what?"

"They say the president put a thousand in
his pocket, and the school guardian another
thousand in his, and the teacher five
hundred."

"The whole school only cost a thousand.
It's wrong to slander people, grandfather. That's
all nonsense."

"I don't know, . . . I only tell you
what folks say."

But it was clear that Semyon did not believe
the schoolmistress. The peasants did not believe
her. They always thought she received too large a
salary, twenty-one roubles a month (five would
have been enough), and that of the money that she
collected from the children for the firewood and
the watchman the greater part she kept for
herself. The guardian thought the same as the
peasants, and he himself made a profit off the
firewood and received payments from the peasants
for being a guardian--without the knowledge of the
authorities.

The forest, thank God! was behind them, and
now it would be flat, open ground all the way to
Vyazovye, and there was not far to go now. They
had to cross the river and then the railway line,
and then Vyazovye was in sight.

"Where are you driving?" Marya
Vassilyevna asked Semyon. "Take the road to
the right to the bridge."

"Why, we can go this way as well. It's
not deep enough to matter."

"Mind you don't drown the horse."

"What?"

"Look, Hanov is driving to the
bridge," said Marya Vassilyevna, seeing the
four horses far away to the right. "It is
he, I think."

"It is. So he didn't find Bakvist at
home. What a pig-headed fellow he is. Lord have
mercy upon us! He's driven over there, and what
for? It's fully two miles nearer this way."

They reached the river. In the summer it was
a little stream easily crossed by wading. It
usually dried up in August, but now, after the
spring floods, it was a river forty feet in
breadth, rapid, muddy, and cold; on the bank and
right up to the water there were fresh tracks of
wheels, so it had been crossed here.

"Go on!" shouted Semyon angrily and
anxiously, tugging violently at the reins and
jerking his elbows as a bird does its wings.
"Go on!"

The horse went on into the water up to his
belly and stopped, but at once went on again with
an effort, and Marya Vassilyevna was aware of a
keen chilliness in her feet.

Her shoes and goloshes were full of water, the
lower part of her dress and of her coat and one
sleeve were wet and dripping: the sugar and flour
had got wet, and that was worst of all, and Marya
Vassilyevna could only clasp her hands In despair
and say:

Oh, Semyon, Semyon! How tiresome you are
really! . . ."

The barrier was down at the railway crossing.
A train was coming out of the station. Marya
Vassilyevna stood at the crossing waiting till it
should pass, and shivering all over with cold.
Vyazovye was in sight now, and the school with the
green roof, and the church with its crosses
flashing in the evening sun: and the station
windows flashed too, and a pink smoke rose from
the engine . . . and it seemed to her that
everything was trembling with cold.

Here was the train; the windows reflected the
gleaming light like the crosses on the church: it
made her eyes ache to look at them. On the little
platform between two first-class carriages a lady
was standing, and Marya Vassilyevna glanced at her
as she passed. Her mother! What a resemblance!
Her mother had had just such luxuriant hair, just
such a brow and bend of the head. And with
amazing distinctness, for the first time in those
thirteen years, there rose before her mind a vivid
picture of her mother, her father, her brother,
their flat in Moscow, the aquarium with little
fish, everything to the tiniest detail; she heard
the sound of the piano, her father's voice; she
felt as she had been then, young, good-looking,
well-dressed, in a bright warm room among her own
people. A feeling of joy and happiness suddenly
came over her, she pressed her hands to her
temples in an ecstacy, and called softly,
beseechingly:

"Mother!"

And she began crying, she did not know why.
Just at that instant Hanov drove up with his team
of four horses, and seeing him she imagined
happiness such as she had never had, and smiled
and nodded to him as an equal and a friend, and it
seemed to her that her happiness, her triumph, was
glowing in the sky and on all sides, in the
windows and on the trees. Her father and mother
had never died, she had never been a
schoolmistress, it was a long, tedious, strange
dream, and now she had awakened. . . .

"Vassilyevna, get in!"

And at once it all vanished. The barrier was
slowly raised. Marya Vassilyevna, shivering and
numb with cold, got into the cart. The carriage
with the four horses crossed the railway line;
Semyon followed it. The signalman took off his
cap.